Potential impact of climate change on the peach producing region in Zacatecas, Mexico

Abstract

In the State of Zacatecas is located the most important region planted with native peach under rainfed conditions of Mexico with a surface of 12 025 ha. Currently, worldwide is accepted that globally there is a phenomenon of global atmospheric warming and that in part is due to the increase in the concentration of the so-called "greenhouse gases ̈. A retrospective analysis of climate change indices for peach under rainfed was conducted. We used temperature anomalies for the period 2011-2060, estimated with an assembly of 10 global climate models (GCMs) for generating maps of future temperatures using the climate of reference from 1961 to 2003. With these maps of temperature, we obtained maps of cold hours for five future scenarios. The retrospective analysis showed a trend in the increase of the maximum and minimum temperature and consequently a decrease of cold in the winter period. With future scenarios of cold hours the average hours and decreased surface areas with higher cold accumulation and increase in areas with lower accumulation of cold production areas decrease was quantified. The results show the decline of the winter cold; however, since peaches are grown medium to low cold requirement, it is considered that in the short to medium term there will be no impact of the decline in cold hours on the growth and development of peach. However, in the medium term it will be convenient the introduction and evaluation of varieties with low cold requirement such as ‘Victoria Temprano’, ‘Fred’ and ‘Michele’. In the long term we ́ll have to find niches with higher accumulation of cold or varieties with low cold requirement.